Coming to the App Store.
Most listening apps play the language slowly. Nobody outside the app will. Ear Drills NL gives you Dutch at natural speed, and the tools to survive it — 180 episodes from A1 to C2, thirty at every level, each recorded twice: once in Netherlands Dutch and once in Belgian Dutch.
Episodes run from two neighbours saying good morning on a bridge to professors arguing about whether a classic may be rewritten. In between: a job interview, a parcel that never arrived, a debate about tourists, a lecture on what the history curriculum leaves out.
What you will find inside:
- Hidden mode by default — the transcript appears as one blank block per word, so you can see the shape of the sentence without reading it. You listen, you guess, and only then do you reveal.
- Every word individually timed — the text lights up in step with the voice, so when a sentence slips past you it is obvious which word did it. One tap replays that line.
- Both accents — switch between Netherlands and Belgian Dutch mid-episode and hear the same sentence two ways.
- Comprehension questions, asked in Dutch from B1 up, so answering is itself listening practice
- Dictation — the line plays, you type the missing words
- A glossary that grows with the level — six entries at A1, twelve at C2, because the harder the episode the more likely a word is the one you don’t have
- Fully offline — no streaming, no account, no sign-up. It works on a plane.
| Episodes | 180 — thirty per level, A1 to C2 |
|---|---|
| Recorded lines | 2,500, each in two accents |
| Listening time | 118 minutes NL, 149 minutes BE |
| Glossary | 1,150 entries |
| Words of dialogue | 21,790 |
What it costs. Levels A1, A2 and B1 are free in full — ninety episodes, enough to get from nothing to holding a conversation. B2, C1 and C2 give you the first two episodes of each level to try. The rest unlocks with a single purchase, once, forever. There is no subscription: the collection is finished, and charging rent on a finished thing would be a strange promise to make.
The app works fully offline and does not collect any personal data. Every line is spoken by a synthesised voice rather than recorded by an actor; the per-word timings are generated from the audio itself, so the highlighting follows the voice that is actually playing.
